Garden Diary: Reimagining the garden

The external structure of the new room is up. Now I can see the pattern and geometry of the facade that will form the most prominent side of the garden--the entry side. The surprise is how very off center is the twelve-foot-wide door opening to the garden.  (The doors are black, and their sharp definition against the rough masonry facade has a lot of visual punch.) The scale of the back wall in comparison to the door opening creates a simple but powerful geometry I can't ignore. It will be a dominant element in the garden.

The grand revelation. Now I can see the back wall of the new garden room, and it demands reimagining the garden.

I'm remembering what I learned in the books of John Brookes about using a grid derived from the dimensions of the house, or a significant component of the house, to define the garden space. It appears I need to work with a series of rectangles--the rectangle of a single door, the rectangle consisting of the unit of four doors, and the rectangle formed by the back wall of the extension. And, of course, the position of the door opening within the wall itself, which will determine how the body moves out of the house into the garden, which in turn sets certain spatial and aesthetic expectations.

The garden has to 'grow' out of this nest of shapes, and invite the human body to enter ... what? To be determined ...

I don't intend to abandon earlier concepts, those described here, and here, and here. But I do have some rethinking to do.

I'm quite happy about this. More challenges, more problems to solve. More fun!